The Competitiveness of Nations

in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy

H.H. Chartrand

May 2002

AAP Homepage

Eugene F. Miller

Positivism, Historicism, and Political Inquiry (Web 3)

American Political Science Review

Volume 66, Issue 3

Sept. 1972, 796-817

Index

Introduction [Web 1]

Epistemological Issues That Divide Positivism and Historicism

The Revolt Against Positivism in the Philosophy of Science [Web 2]

The Growth of Historicism in American Political Science [Web 3]

Conclusion: Beyond Positivism and Historicism in Political Inquiry [Web 4]

 

The Growth of Historicism in American Political Science

Thus far I have given attention to the emergence of historicism in Germany, its conflict with positivism over the character of human knowledge, and its influence in one field of philosophy - the philosophy of science - after 1930.  If space permitted, it would be fruitful to trace the development of similar theories of knowledge in other countries and to consider the influence of this general epistemological position on other fields of philosophy and other philosophical movements.

Our task now is to examine the recent flowering of historicism in American political science.  While traditional currents of American thought, such as pragmatism, have no doubt contributed to this development, there are four sources of historicist influence which seem particularly important and whose impact I wish to consider: (1) antipositivist writings in the philosophy and history of science; (2) writings in the sociology of knowledge that adopt the position of Karl Mannheim: (3) recent work in existential phenomenology; and (4) the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche.  Of the political scientists who draw from these sources, some freely

24. For example, Ernest Nagel has conceded that “the principle of causality” (his term for what others have called the principle of the uniformity of nature) must be regarded as an indispensable or logically necessary maxim by anyone who chooses to adopt the goals of explanation and control as conceived by modern science.  Yet he admits that the choice between modern theoretical science and other views of knowledge is itself historically contingent and logically arbitrary.  In other words, there seems to be no basis in reason, nature, or history for regarding the underlying assumptions of modern science as more true or valid than those that underlie any other type of explanation that might be chosen by men of another epoch.  See The Structure of Science, pp. 316-324.

806

embrace a thoroughgoing relativism, while others avoid or resist the conclusion that genuine or final knowledge is impossible.  I shall attempt to show that relativism becomes unavoidable once certain premises of historicism are granted.

In justifying their particular conception of science, advocates of a behavioral approach have commonly invoked the authority of the philosophy of science.  They have assumed - and a generation of political scientists has been taught to believe - that there exists within the philosophy of science a consensus favoring a positivistic conception of scientific inquiry.  We have seen, however, that there is a basic conflict about the nature of science within the philosophy of science itself, arising from the broader dispute at the level of epistemology about the character of human knowledge.  Ironically, a revolt against positivism was beginning in the philosophy of science at about the time that political scientists were adopting the positivistic model of scientific inquiry as the basis for their own revolution.  By the time the behavioral revolution had reached its objective, the shape of things in the philosophy of science had changed dramatically.  Nevertheless, the methodological literature in political science continues to treat the positivistic model as though it enjoyed the full endorsement of philosophers of science.  The writing of such men as Kuhn and Hanson are, in fact, often cited in support of the behavioralists’ program, with little apparent recognition of the extent to which their views jeopardize the very foundations of behavioralism.

One political scientist who has drawn attention to the lag or gulf between contemporary work in the philosophy of science and political scientists’ perceptions of that field is John Gunnell.  Agreeing generally with the epistemological position of such antipositivists as Kuhn, Hanson, Toulmin, and Feyerabend, Gunnell questions several features of the positivist conception of science, particularly its deductive model of explanation.  The deductive model, he charges, is not an accurate representation of the actual logic of inquiry in natural science.  And even if this logic were accurate insofar as natural science is concerned, there would be no basis for insisting that social science should conform to it.  The canons of scientific inquiry for a particular field must be determined by scientists who work in that field and not by some outside authority. 21  This is not to say that Gunnell is without convictions of his own regarding the proper approach to political inquiry.  He would replace the behavioral approach with one that draws from the insights of Max Weber, the later Wittgenstein, and phenomenologists such as Alfred Schutz.  In brief, Gunnell argues that each society organizes itself around certain symbolic forms, which determine its view of social reality and define for its members the possibilities of action.  The meaning of human action is to be found in the symbolic context from which it arises.  The task of the social scientist is to illuminate the symbolic contexts that give meaning to action in various societies.  To explain action is to give its meaning for the actor by reference to symbols and concepts that are operative in the social situation. 26

Gunnell wishes to throw off the burden that a slavish adherence to the positivist model has imposed on political inquiry, but one must wonder if that effort can succeed on the grounds on which he has chosen to base it.  He could reach his objective by arguing, on philosophical grounds, that the human things are essentially different from the nonhuman things and must be understood by methods of inquiry that are different from those now employed in natural science.  In fact, he seems to take this very path in defending his own view of explanation against that of logical empiricism, for he holds that social science must deal not with a “first order reality,” like the natural world of concern to physical science, but with a “second order reality,” namely, “a world of intersubjectively shared symbols, a logically ordered world that has been pre-constituted by the participants and in whose terms action is conducted and justified,” 27   Here Gunnell seems to argue that a variety of methods is required by the nature of things and the nature of understanding.  In another context, however, he attempts to protect social science against the doctrinaire claims of a particular school of philosophy by rejecting

25. Gunnell, “Deduction, Explanation, and Social Scientific Inquiry,” American Political Science Review, 63 (December, 1969), 1233-1246.  The same issue contains replies to Gunnell by Arthur S. Goldberg and A. James Gregor, along with a rejoinder by Gunnell, pp. 1247-1262.  Gunnell draws upon antipositivist accounts of theory and observation to oppose the prevailing epistemological assumptions of political scientists in “The Idea of the Conceptual Framework: A Philosophical Critique,” Journal of Comparative Administration, I (August, 1969), 140-176.  Thomas Landon Thorson’s Biopolitics (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970) is another work by a political scientist that discusses sympathetically the antipositivist revolt in the philosophy of science.

26. Gunnell, “Social Science and Political Reality: The Problem of Explanation,” Social Research, 35 (Spring, 1968), 159-201.

27. Gunnell, in Social Research, p. 180.

807 Index

philosophy altogether as the measure of empirical science.  He adopts the view of Kuhn and others that the meaning of science for a particular field is determined entirely by convention, or by the existing “paradigm”:

The meaning of “science” at any time or place is determined by the paradigm which informs scientific activity and reasoning and which specifies the conception of reality and the phenomena to be investigated, designates problems for investigation, and determines the criteria of acceptable explanation and inference. 28

Philosophy can analyze and clarify the language of science and explore problems that science raises, but it cannot provide an authoritative critique of the “framework of ideas about reality, theories, and rules which together constitute a paradigm or conceptual scheme for interpreting and organizing experience.” 29  Gunnell denies that this contextualist approach abandons the ideals of objectivity and intersubjectivity, but he admits that objective or inter-subjective standards in science are always relative to a particular context or paradigm.  Neither logic nor epistemology can establish “transcontextual standards” for science.

By holding that the meaning of science at any time or place is relative to the prevailing paradigm, Gunnell may win his battle against those outside of social science who would impose on it a reconstruction of scientific method based on natural science, but he has left social science at the mercy of whatever paradigm should arise there from fate or choice.  Let us suppose that contrary to Gunnell’s wishes, the method of natural science comes to be accepted as the de facto paradigm in the social sciences.  His contextualist position leaves us with no philosophical basis for questioning its authority.  In order to be strictly consistent, Gunnell would have to concede that his own preferred methodology is but a recommendation to the community of social scientists about a possible consensus or paradigm for inquiry.  He has undermined any possible claim that it is founded upon a transcontextual grasp of the nature of things or of reality.  The basis for Gunnell’s position is not so much a belief in the autonomy of scientific inquiry as a scepticism about the capacity of philosophy itself to move from opinions, or conventional representations of reality, to knowledge of the nature of things.  Philosophical speculation, like scientific, religious, and common-sense thinking, must take place within its own distinctive paradigm or conceptual framework which, we may suppose, is ultimately conventional or historical.  Gunnell might avoid the relativism that is implicit in the position of Kuhn and others and find a secure foundation for his own methodology by granting that the mind can transcend all paradigms or presuppositions and test them by its grasp of the permanent structure of reality.  He holds instead that all thought and observation are relative to some particular community’s conceptualization of the real world. 30

Sheldon Wolin has considered both behavioral and traditional political theory in light of the new interpretation of science.  In “Paradigms and Political Theories,” 31 Wolin develops Kuhn’s position at length, drawing attention, we must note, to the arbitrary element that is involved in the choice of scientific paradigms.  He shows quite effectively that Kuhn’s interpretation undercuts the assumptions about the nature and development of science that have guided the behavioral movement in political science.  He goes on to argue that the history of political theory can be understood in terms of Kuhn’s model of scientific development.  In particular, he compares the role of the “epic theories” in the history of political thought to that of paradigms in the history of science.  In his view such epic theorists as Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Marx “considered theorizing to be an activity aimed at the creation of new paradigms.” 32  These “paradigm-creators” established new visions of the political world which were then applied and developed by less original theorists,

28. Gunnell, “Deduction, Explanation, and Social Science Inquiry,” p. 1244.

29. Gunnell, “Deduction, Explanation ...,“ pp. 1245-46.

30. Gunnell’s position may be contrasted with the more cautious position of Berger and Luckmann, to which I refer later.  He does not restrict himself to the methodological assertion that the social scientist must grasp a society’s understanding of social reality in order to explain action within that society.  He seems to embrace the philosophical or epistemological view that all definitions of social reality are relative to some community and, furthermore, that one can never move beyond these various definitions to a true understanding of the nature of society as such.  See particularly Gunnell’s “Social Science and Political Reality,” pp. 184-186.  Neither reason nor experience offers a standpoint on which an objective understanding of social reality can be based.  The attempt to construct an independent definition of social reality by reasoning must employ arbitrary or contingent assumptions (pp. 160-68).  Moreover, an objective account of social reality cannot be built on experience because there are no independent or autonomous observations. (pp. 178- 80).

31. In Politics and Experience: Essays Presented to Michael Oakeshott, ed. Preston King and B. C. Parekh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 125-152.

32. Wolin, in Politics and Experience, pp. 139-140.

808

or “paradigm workers,” who correspond to the “normal scientists” of Kuhn’s analysis.  Wolin argues further that political societies may also be understood as embodiments of paradigms of an operative kind, namely, the totality of institutions, practices, and beliefs in accordance with which the society carries on its political life:  Two important points are made about the relationship of theoretical and operative paradigms.  First, the epic political theorist, unlike the extraordinary theorist in natural science, seeks to change the world about which he speculates (i:e:, the social world) and not merely the way men look at the world.  He may accomplish this by persuading rulers to adopt his theory as the social paradigm or by winning acceptance for it in the universities.  Second, the major political theories are a response not to a theoretical crisis but to a political crisis, to a condition in which the operative paradigm of society cannot adapt to challenges or changes.  The theory seeks to discredit and to replace the operative paradigm.  Wolin closes with a suggestion about the nature of the paradigm that guides behavioral studies in political science:  Its assumptions and criteria are derived not from a general theory but from the operative paradigm of the liberal or democratic regime in which it is conducted.

In a subsequent essay, “Political Theory as a Vocation,” 33 Wolin develops much the same position, but expands his analysis and critique of behavioralism.  Specifically, he argues that a belief in the primacy of method, resembling the methodological emphasis of Descartes, is the distinguishing feature of the behavioral movement.  In the absence of a general theory, the assumptions about man and society that guide behavioral research have been drawn from the prevailing political ideology.  Consequently, the goodness or normality of the established system is presupposed in research and theorizing alike.  Empirical theories may provide explanations of why things happen as they do, but they can offer “no significant choice or critical analysis of the quality, direction, or fate of public life.” 34  Wolin contends that it is the vocation of the political theorist to offer a critique of the established order and a vision of new possibilities.  He criticizes contemporary education in political science for depreciating that “tacit political knowledge” which is a precondition of critical theory.

Wolin’s analysis provides another illustration of the manner in which historicist arguments originating in the philosophy of science can be used against behavioral political science.  Yet as in Gunnell’s case, there is no evidence that Wolin can avoid the relativistic implications of these arguments for political theory itself.  The central problem to emerge from Wolin’s discussion is the epistemological status of the “epic political theories.”  This problem is not dealt with directly, but a solution is implied.  Wolin would certainly deny that political theory is merely a reflection of the prevailing worldview of society.  By definition, theory must be critical of established opinions and institutions.  In Wolin’s account, theory is more a source than a consequence of society’s operative paradigm.  In the final analysis, however, theories seem to rest on presuppositions whose truth or congruence with nature cannot be established conclusively by reason or experience.  Let us recall that Wolin likens an epic political theory to a scientific paradigm in Kuhn’s sense of the term.  He emphasizes the fact that for Kuhn, there is no objective way of deciding among competing paradigms.  An “arbitrary element” ultimately guides the selection.  It is a commitment that must rest on faith, not on a cognitive grasp of nature or reality as it is.  Now, Wolin points to several differences between political theories and scientific paradigms, but he never denies that they are alike in the ultimate arbitrariness of their fundamental assumptions.  It is not merely Wolin’s silence here that leads one to believe that political theories are finally arbitrary.  We may note that he speaks consistently of “choosing” or “creating” a theory rather than of developing or discovering theoretical knowledge.  Granting that the theorist can be “highly self-conscious” about choosing among theoretical alternatives, 35 does nature provide a standard for guiding the choice?  Wolin adopts the argument of Kuhn, Hanson, and others to the effect that we perceive “facts” only through concepts that are usually derived from a theory.  Creativity and imagination must play a large part in theorizing because facts are not univocal.  But is “nature” also relative to a theoretical commitment, or is it there prior to theorizing to be discovered as it is?  It seems doubtful that Wolin would concede this, even though he claims to be restating the older understanding of theory, of the bios theoretikos.  One suspects that Wolin has liberated theory not merely from bondage to empirical fact but from any obligation to represent nature or reality as it is:

A solution to our problem seems to depend

33. Wolin, “Political Theory as a Vocation,” American Political Science Review, 63 (December, 1969), 1062-1082.

34. Wolin, “Political Theory as a Vocation,” p. 1063.

35. Wolin, “Political Theory,” p.  1075

809

on Wolin’s understanding of what he, following Michael Polanyi, calls “tacit knowledge.”  Wolin contends that political theory is built on tacit political knowledge.  More specifically, the source of theoretical vision and creativity is “the stock of ideas which an intellectually curious and broadly educated person accumulates and which come to govern his intuitions, feelings, and perceptions.”  But are these “ideas” themselves the result of vision, of the mind’s grasp of the nature of things?  Wolin speaks of them as “human creations,” not as discoveries.  As presuppositions of thought, they rarely find theoretical expression.  They “bear a family resemblance to ‘bias.’”  It would appear that they are historically conditioned and, with respect to their rational ground, arbitrary. 36

Turning now to our second source, we must note that Karl Mannheim’s writings have been less influential in political science than in sociology, where the sociology of knowledge has been an established field for more than three decades.  He is perhaps best known among political scientists for his discussion of the concept of ideology.  It is important to recognize that Mannheim’s treatment of ideology is deeply influenced by his own commitment to historicism.  His “general-total” conception of ideology, “according to which the thought of all parties in all epochs is of an ideological character,” merely restates his own historicist thesis that all thought including that of philosophers and social scientists, is socially determined and historically variable. 37  Most political scientists who acknowledge a debt to Mannheim in their own discussions of ideology have nevertheless defended the ideal of scientific knowledge against Mannheim’s relativistic conclusions.  It is questionable, however, whether one can reasonably uphold the ideal of scientific objectivity after having accepted the bulk of Mannheim’s argument for the ideological (or historicist) character of human thought.

The difficulties inherent in this undertaking come to light in William E. Connolly’s Political Science and Ideology. 38  Connolly agrees with Mannheim that all thinking, including scientific inquiry, gives expression to a particular Weltanschauung or “perspective,” which is the product of the thinker’s epoch, culture, and social position.  Mannheim was correct in holding that mental productions are linked to the social process, although he failed to give an adequate explanation of this link - a defect which Connolly remedies by drawing upon George Herbert Mead’s historicist account of language.  The perspective supplies an individual with his fundamental beliefs or presuppositions, his values, and the concepts that he uses in thinking, speaking, and interpreting his experience.  In order to engage in political activity in situations of relative uncertainty, men develop ideologies,

36. Wolin, “Political Theory,” pp. 1073-1074.  Wolin refers us to Michael Polanyi, but Polanyi’s stand regarding the problem of historicism is not altogether clear.  Marjorie Grene, in The Knower and the Known (London: Faber and Faber, 1966), emphasizes the similarity of Polanyi’s approach to the Lebensphilosophie of Dilthey and the existential phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty.  On the other hand, Helmut Kuhn argues that Polanyi does nothing less than overcome the “crisis of the philosophical tradition generally known under the title of “historicism.’”  According to Kuhn, Polanyi regards genuine knowledge not as a creation of the mind but as the mind’s discovery of the character of reality through contact with it.  See Kuhn’s “Personal Knowledge and the Crisis of the Philosophical Tradition,” in Intellect and Hope: Essays in the Thought of Michael Polanyi, ed. Thomas A. Langford and William H. Poteat (Durham: Duke University Press, 1968), pp. 111-135, Wolin does not indicate which of these interpretations he would prefer.

Other writings of Wolin seem also to take a position that is implicitly relativistic.  In Politics and Vision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), pp. 17-21, he distinguishes between two meanings of vision, i.e., “objective” vision, which seeks to describe an object or event dispassionately, and “imaginative” vision, which constructs models that reflect the theorist’s own fundamental values.  Imaginative vision, it would seem, is always from a “perspective” and cannot claim to grasp reality as it is.  The perspectival character of theory is emphasized also in “Political Theory: Trends and Goals,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. David L. Sills (New York: Macmillan and The Free Press, 1968), XII, 318-331, where Wolin asks: “Does each theory present us with a different political world?  Is political theory a bedlam of subjectivity and relativism?  How does one decide whether one theory is truer than another?  Is the history of political theory merely a succession of different theories, instead of successive additions to our knowledge and understanding of politics?”  Having raised the crucial issues, he replies that “[t]hese questions cannot be answered here, even assuming that they can be answered satisfactorily at all” (pp. 322-323).  His statements about the nature of facts and concepts seem, however, to rule out the very possibility of a definitive understanding of nature or reality.

37. Ideology and Utopia, trans. Louis Wirth and Edward Shils (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1949), pp. 55-108.  Mannheim’s position is related to broader currents of modern thought in Maurice Mandelbaum, The Problem of Historical Knowledge and H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society (New York: Knopf, 1958).  For Mannheim’s influence on contemporary sociology, see Albert Salomon, “Karl Mannheim, 1893-1947,” Social Research, 14 (September, 1947), 350-364; Kurt Wolff, “The Sociology of Knowledge and Sociological Theory,” in Llewellyn Gross, ed., Symposium on Sociological Theory (Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson and Co., 1959), 567—602; Kurt Wolff, From Karl Mannheim; and Irving Louis Horowitz, Philosophy, Science and the Sociology of Knowledge (Springfield, Ill.: Thomas, 1961).

38. Connolly, Political Science and Ideology (New York, Atherton Press, 1967).

810 Index

i.e., systems of beliefs or empirical claims which purport to describe and explain the social and political environment.  An ideology grows out of a perspective.  It construes the environment in ways that are congruent with and supportive of that perspective.  It contains beliefs and assumptions about the world that have not been fully tested, but which are accepted, as it were, on faith.  It resists falsification by assimilating information in ways that protect these assumptions, as well as the individual’s higher level beliefs and values.

Connolly refuses to agree with those who hold that political inquiry is inherently ideolog­cal or subjective.  He accepts the scientific ideal of political inquiry, the goal of which is to replace ideology by scientific theory, whose assumptions and concepts are defined explicitly and precisely and whose propositions about the world have withstood empirical testing.  Yet given the perspectival character of human thought, is there reason to believe that this goal can be achieved?  Connolly admits that we can never raise all of our presuppositions and concepts to the level of consciousness.  He concedes that we experience the world and interpret our experience in conformity with our broader perspective.  He seems to grant that the scientific ideal is unattainable in practice.  He does not believe, however, that his epistemological premises undercut the scientific ideal in principle - a conclusion that is certainly open to question.  Let us concede that the scientific ideal is valid in principle, which, for Connolly, means that no one has established conclusively that it cannot be attained.  What reason is there to pursue a goal that seems for all practical purposes to be unattainable?  One might argue that the goal of modern science, though unattainable in practice, represents the perfection of the human understanding, the highest and most natural attainment of the mind.  The great thinkers who laid the epistemological foundations of modern science took this position.  Connolly is not willing to claim, however, that the logic of modern science, or its method, or its criteria of validation, are inherently sounder or more natural than those belonging to any other mode of thought.  He accepts Mannheim’s crucial premise that each perspective has its own view of the aims of inquiry and its own canons of validity.  The logic of modern science is but one of these “social emergents.”  It is not possible to show, on ontological, psychological, or empirical grounds, that this logic is more valid than another.  For all we know, the ideal of scientific objectivity cannot be realized in practice nor shown in principle to be sounder than other conceptions of human knowledge.  Yet even though this ideal might be impracticable and baseless, Connolly would nevertheless have us strive to attain it; for while this striving might not make our ideologies more true, it will make them more “responsible.”  In effect, he shifts from epistemological to ethical grounds in attempting to justify the scientific ideal.  If Connolly’s view of knowledge is correct, however, one must wonder if his criteria of responsibility are not themselves the product of a particular perspective and, in the final analysis, arbitrary.

Whereas phenomenology has served as a foundation for psychological and sociological inquiry for decades, especially in Europe, it did not begin to have a noticeable impact on American political science until the mid-1960s.  In assessing this impact, one must keep in mind that a commitment to phenomenology as a method of inquiry or even as a philosophical position does not necessarily entail a commitment to an historicist epistemology.  As we have seen, the phenomenological movement was, at the outset, strongly opposed to historicism.  Although phenomenology and historicism tended subsequently to merge, there is no reason, in principle, that a phenomenologist today might not adopt epistemological principles that favor the search for transcendent and permanent knowledge.  Again, social scientists who follow a phenomenological approach might choose, with Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, to “bracket” epistemological problems, i.e., to leave them to philosophers. 39  Yet as a recent essay by Marvin Surkin shows, a phenomenological approach to political science can be combined with historicism in a radical form. 40

39. See Berger and Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (Garden City: Doubleday, 1966), pp. 1-17.  Berger and Luckmann concede that the philosopher, as opposed to the sociologist, is obligated “to obtain maximal clarity as to the ultimate status of what the man in the street believes to be ‘reality’ and ‘knowledge.’  Put differently, the philosopher is driven to decide where the quotation marks are in order and where they may safely be omitted, that is, to differentiate between valid and invalid assertions about the world” (p. 2).  One must wonder, however, why social scientists should not attempt to understand opinions about social reality in light of what is really true of society.

40. See Surkin’s “Sense and Non-sense in Politics,” in An End to Political Science, ed. Marvin Surkin and Alan Wolfe (New York: Basic Books, 1970), pp. 13-33.  This essay is a slight modification of one that appeared earlier in PS, 2 (Fall, 1969), 573-581.  Surkin here outlines a methodology for political science based on existential phenomenology and indicts the behavioral approach on grounds similar to those of Wolin.  Despite its claim to objectivity and value neutrality, behavioralism is said to reflect the prevailing ideology and to serve the dominant institutions of [American society. Surkin does not claim that his alternative methodology is any less evaluative, ideological, or contingent than behavioral methodology, for in his view, all claims to truth and all modes of philosophical and social inquiry are contingent and socially determined.  His methodology is fundamentally different from behavioralism in this respect: recognizing its own contingent and ideological character, it dedicates itself to criticizing and changing the existing society rather than to preserving it.]

HHC: [bracketed] displayed on p. 812 of original

811

Of those who have criticized the behavioral approach from a phenomenological standpoint, Hwa Yol Jung provides us with the most detailed statements on the implications of existential phenomenology for political inquiry. 41  Jung describes existential phenomenology as the outgrowth of efforts by such thinkers as Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, and John Wild to synthesize and go beyond the existential thought initiated by Kierkegaard and the phenomenological thought initiated by Husserl.  The method of existential phenomenology is essentially descriptive.  It seeks to elucidate the reality of man’s “being in the world” by describing rigorously the meaning of his concrete experience in what Husserl came to call the Lebenswelt (life-world).  The life-world is that primordial and familiar world of everyday existence which we take for granted as the archetype of reality.

Three characteristics of the life-world are regarded by Jung as especially important for political inquiry.  First, the life-world has meaningful patterns and structures which we apprehend prior to reflection through immediate experience or feeling.  It is a world not of “what ‘I think’ but of what ‘I live through.’”  This world of “lived experience” is a preconceptual or pretheoretical world.  It is “pregiven” to the theorist, i.e., presupposed as the foundation of any explicit act of conceptualization in philosophy or science.  Second, the life-world is the theater of action.  We participate in it primarily as actors or doers rather than as thinkers.  Our active participation in the life-world is to be understood in a dual sense.  On the one hand, the life-world serves as the indispensable basis of human action.  It is permeated by values, meanings, concerns, and interests that enter into our motivational field and help to determine what we do.  On the other hand, the reality of everyday existence is itself created or constituted by action or work.  The meaningful objects of consciousness come to view in accordance with the underlying aims or projects of human action.  The life-world is a field of pragmata.  Things in nature as well as cultural artifacts are defined in terms of their serviceability, usability and manipulability.  In sum, action involves both a response to the life-world as given and a projection beyond it toward the creation of new meaning or reality.  Finally, the life-world is an intersubjective or socialized world.  It “refers to the complex living relationships of man to man in culture, in society, in history, and in politics.”  In everyday life the existence of other selves is never in doubt, for we experience them immediately.  Cultural artifacts, especially language, attest to the social character of everyday existence; and our actions are always structured with a view to the reactions and responses of others. 42

Jung’s critique of behavioralism rests on his contention that theoretical knowledge should be founded upon and consonant with our immediate experience of the life-world.  For example, a proper definition of a political concept such as “democracy” requires us to turn directly to our “felt or tacit meaning” of democracy.  Jung finds, however, that the behavioral approach characteristically formulates its concepts and constructs its models in abstraction from the totality of lived experience.  In its eagerness to predict the course of behavior, behavioralism fails to describe political phenomena accurately or to elucidate their meaning.  Jung’s comparison of behavioralism and phenomenology centers primarily around their respective approaches to the study of human action.  The distinctiveness of the phenomenology-

41. See especially Hwa Yol Jung, “The Political Relevance of Existential Phenomenology,” Review of Politics, 33 (October, 1971), 538-563.  A revised version of this essay appears as the Introduction to Existence, Sociality and Political Reality: A Reader in Existential Phenomenology (Chicago: Regnery, 1972).  My analysis of Jung’s thought would have been impossible were it not for his generosity in providing me with a copy of the manuscript of “The Political Relevance of Existential Phenomenology,” which appeared in print only after the completion of my essay.  I have also made use of a revised version of Jung’s “A Phenomenological Critique of the Behavioral Persuasion in Politics: A Philosophical View,” which was delivered at the 1971 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association.  Other writings by Jung on existential phenomenology and politics include: “The Radical Humanization of Politics: Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Politics,” Archiv Fur Rechts und Sozialphilosophie, 53 (1967), 233-256; “Leo Strauss’s Conception of Political Philosophy: A Critique,” Review of Politics, 29 (October, 1967), 492-517: and “Confucianism and Existentialism: Intersubjectivity as the Way of Man,” Philosophy and Ph­nomenological Research, 30 (December, 1969), 186- 202.  For a general account of the influence of phenomenology on social science, see Fred R. Dallmayr, “Existential Phenomenology and Social Science: An Overview and Appraisal,” which will appear in 1972 in a collection of essays on phenomenology to be edited by Edward Casey and David Carr and to be published by the Quadrangle Press.

42. Jung, “The Political Relevance of Existential Phenomenology,” pp. 540-543

812 Index

cal approach is said to lie in its concern for the meaning of human action, that is, the intended meaning which the actor imputes to his action.  Action always embodies a preconceived project, a practical determination of what is to be done.  Behind the project is a motive, which consists of a reason for doing something as well as a force that initiates bodily movement.  It is especially in the reason for an action that we find its meaning.  Behavioralism is unable to grasp the meaning of action because of its commitment to study human phenomena with the methods of the natural sciences.  It fails to recognize that these methods, while appropriate for the investigation of merely natural things, are unsuited for the study of human beings, who are capable of endowing their actions and perceptions with meaning.  In order to adhere to its canons of scientific methodology, behavioralism must restrict itself to the study of overt behavior and, to the extent that it is concerned with intentions, beliefs, motives, feelings, or values, attempt to infer them from the external indications of action.  Without denying the significance of what is observable from the outside, “phenomenology attempts to focus on and capture the meaning of action as the actor lives through it…43  A phenomenological approach in political science would understand political events in light of their meanings as interpreted by political actors themselves.  This intended meaning is accessible through our experience of the life-world, which is a structure of shared meanings.  Our immersion in the life-world allows us to understand the meaning of human action as participants and not simply as observers. 44

Jung is quite aware that existential phenomenology has been identified by some of its critics as a type of historicism.  He denies that this philosophical standpoint leads to an historical relativism, 45 but there is reason to doubt that this outcome can be avoided.  We have taken note of an emphasis within the empiricist and positivist traditions on the mind’s immediate consciousness of pure, unconceptualized experience that is intrinsically meaningful and that can serve as an absolute ground of general knowledge.  While this position is called to mind by Jung’s insistence that conceptual or theoretical knowledge must rest upon and be judged by preconceptual experience, he in fact departs from it radically both by opposing the reduction of experience to mere “sense data” and by holding that meanings are actively constituted by consciousness.

In considering Jung’s stand with regard to the source of meaning, one finds it helpful to know that there has been disagreement within existential phenomenology on the relationship of consciousness to the world.  Some writings, such as Heidegger’s Being and Time and Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, indicate that the individual consciousness constitutes its world and endows it with meaning.  A meaningful world arises from the willful projects of the individual who cares about his own existence.  Other writings stress that there is a meaningful world prior to individual consciousness in which the individual lives and in relation to which his consciousness emerges.  In the later writings of Heidegger, for example, the world of appearances is described not as the creation of will but rather as a revelation of “gift” of Being to which men surrender themselves.  Merleau-Ponty holds that the life-world in which we find ourselves is already there as a structured and meaningful world prior to our perception of its meaning.  This is not to deny that our preconstituted world results from some prior human activity, such as that of a preceding generation, or that its meaning evolves and changes, partly as the result of our own actions.

There are overtones of Sartre and the early Heidegger in Jung’s writings.  He insists quite strongly that experience is not meaningful per se but that we endow it with meaning by our projects.  Inasmuch as “reality is constituted by the meaning of our experiences,” 46 we must conclude that the real world is a construct of human consciousness.  Nevertheless, Jung agrees with Merleau-Ponty that meaning or reality is not simply relative to individual actors.  Action takes place within a world of shared meanings.  Men who share a life-world or culture hold a common view of reality.  The essential point, however, is that Jung would not hold that meaningful experience or reality is simply given to a passive consciousness, as is perhaps suggested by his references to our common-sense understanding of social and political things as “immediate” and “preconceptual.”  The social reality which the theorist attempts to describe is actively constructed in everyday life and thought.

Jung writes that the life-world is “dynamic and changing, which means that it is historical.  As there are different cultures in history, moreover, there are different versions of the life-

43. Jung, “Political Relevance,” p. 562.

44. Jung, “Political Relevance,” pp. 547-553,

45. See Jung, “Leo Strauss’s Conception of Political Philosophy,” pp. 509-514.

46. Jung, “The Political Relevance of Existential Phenomenology”, p. 541.

813

world.” 47  It follows that views of reality attendant upon these different versions of the life-world are relative to time and place.  Given these principles, it would seem that Jung can avoid an historical relativism only by granting that philosophy or science can transcend the horizons of particular versions of the life-world and discover permanent truths in nature or history.  In keeping with the characteristic emphasis of existential phenomenology, he appears to deny the possibility of such transcendence.  He criticizes those approaches to philosophy such as Plato’s which look beyond the world of appearances in search of reality.  The search for a permanent “nature” would be fruitless in any event, for nature has a history, i.e., natural objects are the products of involved consciousness and as such are inherently changeable.  The task of theoretical reflection is to describe the meaning of experience as it is found in the life-world.  Jung does suggest that the study of the life-world in its different versions would reveal invariant structures or essential types that lend themselves to theoretical formulation.  One is reminded of Dilthey’s effort late in life to locate the types of human behavior and stylistic forms through a comparative study of Weltanschauungen.  Yet Dilthey’s own teaching about the historicity of thought makes questionable the presupposition that would seem necessary to the search for a reliable typology, namely, the presupposition that a standpoint outside the flux of history can be gained for contemplating the variety of historical types.  Jung’s search for the essential structures and types of the life-world is likewise called into question by his insistence that science itself is a human project or praxis undertaken by human beings immersed in a particular life-world.  The theorist is left with no solid base on which to stand.

Jung indicates that the invariant principles to be discovered by a phenomenological study of the life-world will concern the structure of human action and consciousness.  At the same time, he denies that man has a constant and universal nature or, indeed, any permanently fixed properties at all.

As an active doer, man is always in the making or on the way.  He is what he makes of himself, and he molds his future by his action.  Thus man has neither fixed properties nor a predetermined future.  The idea that man is always an open possibility constitutes his radical historicity. 48

Yet if there is no human nature, what basis is there for general assertions about the structure of action and consciousness or even about man’s “being in the world”?  There can be no assurance that patterns of life occurring in the past or the present will hold in the future.  Even if there is no fixed nature of man to be discovered, general knowledge might yet be possible if man’s historical development has moved according to inflexible laws that become visible to theorists in the culminating stage of history.  Jung rejects even this Hegelian solution to the problem of epistemological relativism: “The events of history are the making of human consciousness and intervention rather than blind, impersonal forces beyond human control.  Nothing is ‘historically inevitable.’” 49  There is much to be learned from Jung’s reexamination of the philosophical foundations of political inquiry, but he does not provide us with a genuine alternative to an historical relativism.

I have suggested that Nietzsche is the most important precursor of twentieth-century historicism.  Until recently, American political theorists were quite hostile to Nietzsche, largely, it would seem, because of his reputation as an enemy of liberal democracy and a forerunner of fascism.  In the past decade, however, Nietzsche’s epistemological principles have been restated in a succession of books and articles by Henry Kariel, 50 who has emerged as the most important and effective spokesman for radical historicism in American political science.  In Kariel’s view, Nietzsche was first to give power-

47. Jung, “Political Relevance,” p. 543.

48. Jung, “Political Relevance,” p. 542.

49. This quotation appears in the revised manuscript of “The Political Relevance of Existential Phenomenology,” p. 13, but not in the version of the essay that appeared in Review of Politics,

50. See especially Kariel, “Nietzsche’s Preface to Constitutionalism,” Journal of Politics, 25 (May, 1963), 211-225; In Search of Authority (New York: Free Press, 1964); The Promise of Politics (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-HaIl, 1966); “The Political Relevance of Behavioral and Existential Psychology,” American Political Science Review, 61 (June, 1967), 334-342; Open Systems (Itasca, Ill,: Peacock, 1969): “Expanding the Political Present,” American Political Science Review, 63 (September, 1969), 768-776; and “Creating Political Reality,” American Political Science Review, 64 (December, 1970), 1088-1098.  Kariel’s position is developed comprehensively in his forthcoming book, Saving Appearances, which I have had the privilege to examine in manuscript form.  Kariel here argues forcefully against the possibility of a final or objective insight into “nature” or “reality”: “Our knowledge is inescapably fiction, illusion, myth, ideology, and rationalization.”  He calls attention once more to Nietzsche’s influence on this view of knowledge, but the contribution of other thinkers, such as Hobbes, Kant, and Schopenhauer are also examined.  His discussion of American pragmatism brings out its relativistic tendencies with particular clarity.  A critique of Kariel’s thought is offered in Marvin Zetterbaum, “Self and Political Order,” Interpretation, 2 (Winter, 1970), 233-246.

814 Index

ful expression to man’s loss of faith in the possibility of final knowledge in the moral and political realm.  His work, along with that of Freud and Mannheim a few decades later, discredited traditional political philosophy by “disclosing that it is impossible, in principle, to establish with certainty what is just and good for man in common.” 51  Nietzsche’s relativism is both epistemological and ontological.  He teaches that everything, including man himself, undergoes development or change and that there is no realm of final truth or morality behind the flux of appearances. 52

Kariel adopts Nietzsche’s thoroughgoing relativism as the point of departure for his own political theory, although his conclusions remind one more of Dewey, for example, than of Nietzsche.  Since we cannot know what is good or just for men in common, the state must be indifferent to moral values and ultimate ends.  Its proper concern is the means for insuring to each person the maximum freedom to formulate moral truth and create visions of the good which integrate narrowly partisan, private goods.  While Nietzsche was quite willing for the creative man, the Ubermensch, to impose his standards on lesser men, Kariel argues that a consistent relativism will recognize the equal claim of all human ends and pursuits.  It will permit all men to expand their range of experiences, test their potentialities, and display themselves publicly in a variety of roles.  Recognizing with Nietzsche that man creates himself, Kariel would democratize creativity: “… we should ultimately accept as democratic nothing less than a society all of whose members are active participants in an interminable process - and who will not mind such activity.”53

Kariel’s thought has a radical thrust which distinguishes it from the political conservatism of some historicists.  If human thought is unavoidably shaped by prevailing forces, one might conclude that the appropriate political stance is to accept and affirm all that history has foreordained for one’s time.  Kariel, like Nietzsche himself, rejects this passive acceptance of the given.  An acquiescent or ironical stance toward prevailing conditions is justifiable only if one knows with absolute certainty that those conditions are inflexible and unyielding.  Short of such knowledge, we should “make history,” i.e., test the limits of change by opposing established realities and certified truths.  What we believe to be real is, in large measure, our own subjective creation.  We design the world of phenomena and bestow meaning upon it. 54  When we acquiesce in established opinions and institutions, our creativity is blocked.  None of us has the freedom any longer to be a person.  We are prevented from enjoying varied and novel experiences, playing new roles, and discovering new potentialities.  Positivistic political science, in particular, has identified the real with the observable, discredited speculation about alternative possibilities, and reconciled man to his present fate.  In our capacities as citizens and as political scientists, we can know the limits that reality places on our freedom only by testing it, by forcing it to yield: “Taking risks, we must attempt to violate whatever is alleged to be reality, whatever equilibrium positivists certify to be real.” 53  A political science worthy of the name will reconceptualize the world and act to implement its new visions.  It will serve as an irritant, as an opponent of established systems and verities.  Political science, as thus practiced, will serve both to increase our knowledge by disclosing the potentialities and limits of political life and to humanize the political sphere by enlarging the scope for creative action. 56

We see that Kariel’s political theory embodies a conscious, thoroughgoing relativism.  Kariel understands clearly the implications of the epistemological principles that underlie postbehavioralism.  He forces us to face squarely the question of whether or not a relativistic position is viable. 57

51. Kariel, In Search of Authority, p. 5.

52. See Kariel, “Nietzsche’s Preface to Constitutionalism,” which appears in revised form in In Search of Authority, pp. 7-24.

53. Kariel, Open Systems, p. 73.  Italics in the original.

54. See especially Open Systems, p. 123, where Kariel states: “What we single out depends on us - or, more precisely, on the methodological conventions, conceptual frameworks, and boundaries we establish.  And since frameworks, dimensions, and boundaries - reality-organizing principles - are man-made, the facts they expose are contingent on what we deem right and proper, on our norms  Our norms, in other words, structure reality.  Expressing our dispositions, they dispose over facts - as well as of them.  They give reality a significance it cannot otherwise have.  Our inquiries, directed by our norms and our conventions, give meaning which reality does not previously possess.”

55. Kariel, “Creating Political Reality,” p. 1091.

56. Kariel, Open Systen4s, pp. 121-142; “Expanding the Political Present,” pp. 772-776; “Creating Political Reality,” pp. 1091-1098.

57. I have put this question to Professor Kariel and received the following reply in personal correspondence, which I quote with permission: “Is a thorough-going relativism a viable position?  Perhaps we’ll have to redefine - to define – ‘position,’ specify what something vacuous and literally pointless consists of, inquiring into the constitution of nothing.  My only ground for not despairing of the groundlessness of the present is ignorance, my present conviction (daily reconfirmed) that I don’t know what is ahead, that the [future is open and empty, that, while the past is a horror, there is still no evidence that the future must be the same.  (If one is not caught in the conventional conception of time, one can of course think of the past as equally open, as not fully known, as not exhaustively horrible - and hence as allowing for hope.)  So I am rather pleased by our lack of knowledge: my failure to know justifies these very words.  To put it differently, I am in the position of expectancy (a feminine posture), anticipation, waiting.  It arises out of my confidence in my ignorance - not my faith in the redeeming value of what may yet appear in the silences and spaces before us.”  He later adds: “I should still like to maintain not that relativism is ‘viable’ but that nothing else is.”]

HHC: [bracketed] displayed on p. 816 of original

815

Index

Previous Page

Next Page

AAP Homepage